Season finale

English classes have been very dynamic and aimed to learning. We have learned a lot about how to teach a foreign language. Although at the beginning, we did not think that we could learn much by role playing, we have realized that it is essential to make and then analyze them. When you propose exercises it is difficult to take them to reality, but the role plays help to understand how to do them better and seeing what advantages and disadvantages do they have. Also, you can receive others impressions, therefore we get a broader learning.

We have to say that our project has been realized in a dynamic way and appropriately with the help of your advice.

So thanks to all of you and merry Christmas! See you on January!  

Wegoby song

Our teacher Harkaitz gave us the idea creating a song. So one of our project´s activity have been the creation of a song with the contents learned by the children. At the same time, with that song we have made a kind of video clip. We think that this activity can be very powerfull to motivate the children speaking English and aswell to show them doing useful things with their learning.
Even more, if the video clip contents pictures/videos taken by the children or pictures/videos of themselves, the result would be much more significant for the children.

Below we explain how to do it:

1.  In free online application named soundation.com you can create the rhythm or music like you want. There is a large variety of goods rhythms. Once you create the music, you must export it (File_export, we choose wav format).
2. Then, you record the voice, for that you need a microphone (some computer have it inside). In our case we didn´t got it, so we recorded in the mobile phone and then send it to the computer by email.
3. Then you need to downloud to your computer Audacity free application. After installing it (few seconds) and open it, you must import the music create before and the recorded voice (File_import or just drag them into audacity window). To finish you export it. It gives several format to export it, we have choosen wav format and it works.
4. Finally to do the video clip there is a lot of applications, movie maker, picasa... We did it in imovie, that it´s the same as movie maker but for mac.

We hope you´ll enjoy it

Presentations of the projects

All the groups have presented our projects. We have also learned many things on these presentations. We have seen a way to work the English by going to a farm. Usually this trips are used ass regular classes, not with the purpose of teaching English, and they can also be an advantage to teach English. It is important to join the topic they work in class and the topic of the English lessons, so this way we can take advantage of this trips to work the English vocabulary. It is very important and nice that children could manipulate and experiment for themselves the products, instead of using always images.

We have learned how to include the vocabulary through stories and songs. Choosing a suitable story for a task can be a little difficult for children but very nice at the same time. Using stories is very nice and effective way for this.

Another very original way for children to work new vocabulary is after showing them the pictures, doing a story with them and making them repeat what they have, by performing a series of questions, to help children acquire the new vocabulary.

We have seen in most of the groups that keep balance between the theory and the practical part using games, mimic, movement, etc...

In these role plays we have also collected a series of positive messages that we want to share in our blog. Firstly, we present vocabulary through images collected by the children. Children see those of images weekly in different formats, power -point and album. Secondly, each week children produce some things that they are going to use then to play (theater, map), other to have fun (create song), and the others to communicate (Skype, etc.). Thirdly and last, the vocabulary is highly related and at the end we set it all, so children can remember and keep it, while they extend their learning.

Our role play

Our group could not realize the role play based on “Uxue was born” project, so we did a role play about our future project. At the time we were creating the activities, we have had some doubts, but the most difficult aspect has been the how to make children understand the vocabulary they ignore. For this, we have thought that the best way is to present the initial vocabulary by images, pictures… And all this using a simple vocabulary.

In our project, when we add a new topic or vocabulary, we start introducing simple words at the beginning and then we introduce more complex words or sentences. But we are thinking that you they something after the theorycal part, they need some  movement  activity so that children don’t get bored and to get them motivated.

Therefore, to perform the role playing, we have collected some very valid advice. Our classes are 30 minutes long, we have divided classes in two parts.; first a theory part and then the fun part or movement part. In terms of the presentation of images, so this way the teaching  of the vocabulary is more easy and simple for children. Therefore  we will keep this part of the exercises and then we are doing something funny and constructive for the second part of the class. We were also recommended to bring  to class a worker (firefighter)  and to work mixing the Basque and English vocabulary. Following this recommendations we will capture these ideas in our project.

Project: Planning the lessons

Here we are going to explain how do we organize our project's lessons. It will last a month, so we had divided it in 4 aims, one for each week.

Week one: people in our neighbourhood.

All around the neighborhood there are many different kinds of people that do many different kinds of jobs. The first week of "My Neighborhood" month will help children identify and learn about many of these people and the important role that they play in the community. We would help children make connections to their own neighborhood by talking about all the different jobs in your community and the people that work there. Community helpers like teachers, postal workers, and firemen may be the most familiar, but we can also discuss what thier neighbors do and what we can do to help in the neighborhood. This is also a great opportunity to teach about diversity by discussing how people in their neighborhood are the same and different and how that makes the neighborhood special.

Week two: places in our neighbourhood.

This week of activities we are exploring the wonderful places around Egia. Based on our children's observation skills and using as reference the pictures they have taken around the district we are looking for the main buildings and places as sports center, library, park, supermarket, train station....We will talk about what offers each location and we will locate them in a map. 

Week three: getting around the neighbourhood.

How do we get around our neighborhood? Do we walk, drive a car, or take the bus? Maybe children like to ride their bike or scooter. There are so many different ways to get around district and we can use public transportation or bike sidewalks to make moving around even easier. You can talk about the ways that their family travels in the neighborhood. Encourage them to share with others which mode of transportation is their favorite. They can make even try a new routes to get to familiar destination. Don't forget that getting around the neighborhood can be a way to exercise too. Run, jump, or ride your scooter to the park on a nice day. 

Week four: communication with other class.

We would like to have conversations in english with other schools in Europe to improve our speaking skills and knowing their culture.

This week we are preparing a conversation to explain to another kindergarten class how is our district. It would be a simple sentence based conversation and it will be followed by a song. And to finish the conversation we would make some questions about their district.

Project: Context

In the following lines we are going to describe the most important features of our project's context.

How old are the pupils? What type of families they come from? What type of district they live in? What kind of school is it? 

This particular project is for five years old children, so its supposed that they have been learning english from last year.

With the purpose of giving more realism to our project, we chose a real school. The chosen one is Aitor ikastola, a publicized school, from preschool to primary, located in Egia, a district in San Sebastian.

Egia is one of the oldest neighborhoods of San Sebastian, a neighborhood with its own personality and characteristics defined from the point of view of population and sociology. Housing construction, the new courts, sports center Zuhaizti, new parking, etc.. complete the plot in this neighborhood. Different zones are distinguished: Center, Mundaiz, Atotxa, Aldakonea, Virgen del Carmen, Iruresoro, Tolaregoia, High Egia and Latxaga. The total population in Egia is 14.956.

Children of Aitor ikastola come from working class families.

Project: What will be about?

Our final project will not be an english project for its own, it will  be part of an interdisciplinary project. The topic we have chosen to work around will be our district, in this case Egia.

                                           

We want children to get involved with the project and with that purpose it is important to know what do children feel about their district and what things about their district awake most their interest. Once analyzed their interest, the project will depart from that points.

Furthermore, we would like to establish a relationship (take part in a cultural/language exchange) via Skype with an English preschool class, so we found interesting to introduce them to our district at the end of the project as the final activity.